Failing Grades

A letter in response to David Denby’s article (November 19, 2012)

Ravitch insists that American public schools are generally doing just fine, and calls the U.S. high-school graduation rate of 75.5 per cent “higher than ever.” Never mind that that figure is only two points higher than it was eighteen years ago. Meanwhile, twenty countries now have better graduation rates than the U.S., at a time when the global economy values higher-order skills more than ever. The graduation rate in the U.K., Finland, and Japan is now more than ninety per cent. Ravitch insists that poverty is the big problem in the U.S. Although this is partly true, I have visited classrooms in other countries where poor kids are outperforming suburban kids in America, and I have studied generous welfare states with minuscule poverty levels where most kids fail to learn sophisticated critical-thinking skills. I have yet to hear Ravitch explain why the most privileged teen-agers in the U.S. rank twenty-first in math skills, in comparison with the richest teen-agers around the world.

Amanda Ripley

Emerson Fellow

New America Foundation

Washington, D.C.

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